Why Hogger is famous

Because he killed you, made you stop and think, and made you either move on in defeat or find others to take him down.

Read that WoWWiki entry and tell me that it’s a ‘problem’ that Hogger could be defeating in all those different ways, including the ‘creative use of game mechanics’ tactic of dragging him to the guards.

Hogger is the definition of why an MMO is awesome. Nerfing and making Hogger solo-able is the definition of destroying an MMO because some octo-mom got her feelings hurt and would rather make a forum post than talk to another player.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Rant, World of Warcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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You had several posts about WoW about a year ago that proved that you hadn’t played it for a long time and were criticizing it for things that were plain wrong at the time.

Apart from that I think I always agreed with your basic assumptions. We both pretty much want to play the same MMO, judging from your posts. It’s just that I try to have played games recently before I criticize them ;)

Because he was challenging and yet extremely accessible. You didn’t need to sink hundreds of hours into levelling, farm reputation, assemble a perfect set of gear, camp his spawn point for days, complete elaborate attunement chains or do any of that other stuff that gives true hardcores a raging boner.

You could roll a new character on a random server and kill Hogger in the same play session. You could /invite random people who happened to be in the vicinity to help you out, without the need to establish long-lasting social contacts. The punishment for failure and the rewards for success were equally negligible, so fighting and killing Hogger was “just a game” and not “serious business”.

Hogger is famous because he represents challenging content for casual players, and casual players comprise the majority of the population.

That statement really boils the topic down to its essence. Amusement parks aren’t just all ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds or no one would go. There are the gut-check rides too. Even Disneyland has “thrill rides”.

And yes, Hogger is an icon, a vestige of a time when elite mobs existed in the world and whether you liked it or not, you would have to find people to group with to take him out. Now everything is catered to the solo gameplay.

Older MMOs just had a lot more happening to which you needed to be alert at any level. Taking Everquest as my example, as usual since I know it best, we had “zone-sweepers”. Some EQ zones had at least one, often several, roaming monsters or NPCs of a much higher level than the general level of characters using the zone. The griffin in East Commonlands for example, or Rungupp in Steamfont. These could turn up at any time, pretty much anywhere in the zone and send you running or scatter your group.

Some zone sweepers, like Sgt. Slate, had faction, so that they would attack one character while ignoring another. Very interesting emergent gameplay arose in groups where players were trying to help a groupmate under attack while at the same time trying to avoid losing faction with the mob doing the attacking. There was plenty of that all over EQ. I particularly liked the aviaks in South Karana who were neutral every player race except trolls, who they would kill on sight.

Most zones were of widely mixed level, so that you’d have characters a day old, levels in single figures, doing quests and leveling up within sight of characters almost at the level-cap doing the same. That meant danger for the new player, but also built aspirations and relationships. When you’re running away from a giant flying lion, just about to die, and some tiny gnome in a frock jumps out of a bush, freezes the monster in the air and proceeds to nuke the feathers off it, it leaves a lasting impression.

Yes, there was some griefing now and again. Yes, there were a lot of trains. But the benefits of having a wide mix of levels, a wide mix of factions and a highly volatile environment where you had to pay attention all the time far outweighed the drawbacks. Moving to strictly level-based zones and areas was one of the biggest design errors made by the second generation of MMOs.

This was one of the nice beta bait-and-switches pulled by Rift; the first zone is large and has a wide level range, which leads to level 5s fighting with level 20s to fight back an invasion. Then after beta you realize only the first zone does this, and oh, they also reduced the impact of invasion. Yay.

I’m still enjoying Rift a lot, but I agree it was better in beta. It’s a good MMO as it stands it would have been better still had they held the line. There are upcoming changes to zone invasions that look as though they might water things down even further and I’m not thrilled about that, but I’ll hold judgment until I see them in action.

What I miss most from Rift beta is the interaction between planar invasions. I loved the way they would fight each other for territory and you could nudge and push them into it to your advantage. I didn’t actually notice what they did to change that, but it almost never happens now.

Have a look at my latest post, Syncaine. Difficult mobs still remain in early(!) WoW. I recorded a few videos. I still agree with what you say. But the analysis of WoW isn’t that easy and the facts aren’t all that clear.

Hogger was for me like Princess – an early mob that was really hard to kill – once killed you felt like you had achieved something. I’ve written in my blog about Mor’Laidim – it was the same thing for me there as well. Nothing after 30 ever felt quite the same & still doesn’t. There’s something about the newness of it all when we first face these early harder mobs. It leaves a big impression. I like it in The Stockades these days when I see Hogger there- I like the fact his story moves on in Cataclysm.

[…] as such. There was also an interesting post about Hogger over at Hardcore Casual, wondering why Hogger is so memorable. Lots of people chiming in to say that he was their first elite mob, so you always remember the […]